Stalled

The problem with trying to write every day is that you need something to write about. Yes, technically people doing such a method usually say to just “sit and write” but I’m not trying to get in the habit of journaling [1], I’m trying to get better at writing [2] and restart a blogging habit.

After a few days of actual writing and blogging, I’ve now skipped a few days, sometimes because I wrote something I’m not happy enough with to publish (even with the very low bar I’ve set for this series), some other times because I’ve flat out not written anything. So I thought I’d write about… that stalling.

One way I’m going to try and un-stall is by writing about what I read (duh!). I read articles pretty much every day and there should be writing topics in there (re-duh!). Not all of them though and that’s where I’m finding part of the problem. Some days I focus on shorter pieces which end up being “good to know” but not necessarily worth adding to. Also, I read a lot but I don’t always think on what I read, too often I just highlight stuff (in Instapaper) and go to the next article. Before highlighting I would at least turn them into quotes on Tumblr but I’m not even doing that anymore. Which means that the not-blogging and the stalling of this current writing push seem to go like this;

  • Less time.
  • Reading more articles on more topics but not thinking on them enough.
  • Not directly responsible for not writing (I think) but I feel I have to mention that I also read much fewer books than I used to. Not good.
  • Twitter. I love Twitter but often time little thoughts or insights simply go to Twitter and out of mind. Not written anywhere of consequence.

So the new tweak I’ll be putting on this writing thing is to make sure I read something with a bit of “meat” on it every day and pick up the notes and highlights to write something from that. Plus of course random ideas that come up.

 

[1] Although that is exactly how this post started!
[2] “Better” here simply meaning more easy to do, more natural. Quality itself might improve but I would need to write longer form and work on those texts, as opposed to the current “write, re-read, post” format.

Header image by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.